Będzin Castle: A Medieval Frontier Fortress in Poland
Site at a Glance
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- 4.6
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- Medium
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Poland
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page16 sections
History
Będzin Castle is a medieval fortress in Poland, built and expanded by Polish rulers on Castle Hill above the Czarna Przemsza. Its stone development took place in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the Gothic period, when the castle became part of the western frontier defences of the Polish Crown and the chain known as the Eagle Nests.
The early stronghold
Fortifications on Castle Hill date back to the ninth century. The earliest stronghold probably belonged to the Vistulan tribe or its western branch. A settlement grew below it on the southern slope, including the present approach to the castle and the area of the Holy Trinity parish.
The early fortification was enlarged several times. Its first palisade was eventually replaced by the outer rampart of the lower settlement. The inner rampart was levelled, probably in the twelfth century, to make an early Christian cemetery. Traces of burning in the rampart predate the Tatar invasion, so the frequently repeated claim that the Tatars captured the stronghold is rejected by more recent archaeological and dendrochronological research.
The royal frontier castle
A cylindrical stone tower was built inside the stronghold during the second half of the thirteenth century, probably during the reign of Bolesław the Chaste, a thirteenth-century Polish ruler associated with Będzin’s first stone tower. The larger stone castle developed around it under King Casimir III the Great, whose reign saw extensive strengthening of royal fortifications. The castle was functioning by 1348 and is mentioned in 1349, when Wiernko became the first recorded burgrave of Będzin. A burgrave was an official responsible for administering and often defending a castle.
The castle’s construction was closely connected with the loss of Silesia to Bohemian rule in 1348. The frontier between the Polish Crown, the Polish realm represented by the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, and Bohemia followed the Czarna Przemsza at the foot of the hill. Będzin therefore helped defend the western frontier and protect Lesser Poland from incursions from Bohemian or Silesian territory. It formed part of the Eagle Nests, a chain of medieval fortified sites on elevated limestone terrain associated with the defence of the historic Polish western frontier.
The town’s 1358 foundation charter described Będzin as lying “under our castle.” In 1364 the fortress received Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, royal burgraves administered the castle, while its associated estates were generally held for life by members of the knightly estate. Recorded holders included Stanisław of Pogórzyce, Szczepan Pogórski of Pogórzyce, and Benedykt, also called Bieniasz Pogórski.
In 1502 King Alexander Jagiellon authorized Stanisław Jarocki of Jaroszyn, the starost of Sławków, to redeem the royal town of Będzin, its villages, and the castle from Bieniasz Pogórski. A starost was an official or holder of a royal estate. By 1564, an inspection found the castle partly deserted and deteriorating.
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century events
Będzin Castle gained a diplomatic role in August 1588, when it hosted negotiations over the release of Maximilian of Habsburg. Maximilian, a claimant to the Polish crown, had been imprisoned after the Battle of Byczyna. The Polish delegation was led by Jan Zamoyski, Grand Chancellor of the Crown, and included a military escort of 400 hussars and 100 riflemen. Polish hussars were mounted soldiers, often heavily armoured, who played a prominent role in the early-modern Polish military. Other delegates included Andrzej Opaliński, Grand Marshal of the Crown, Hieronim Rozdrażewski, Bishop of Kujawy, the Duke of Ostrog, Jan Gostomski, Voivode of Rawa, and Krzysztof Zienowicz, Voivode of Ruthenia.
The opposing delegation represented Emperor Rudolf II, whose representatives negotiated for the release of Maximilian. It included Wilhelm von Rosenberg, Bishop Miklos Istvanfi of Raab, the Hungarian delegates Jetwansi von Kissenfalva, Krzysztof Lobkowitz, and Jan Kurzbach, the Bohemian delegates Richard Strein von Schwarzenau and Jan Kobentzel, the Austrian delegate Siegfried Promnitz of Pszczyna, and Kasper Rogoyski, representing Stanisław Pawłowski, Bishop of Olomouc.
The negotiations led to the Bytom–Będzin treaty. Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini, the papal representative who later became Pope Clement VIII, mediated the agreement, which was signed at Czeladź town hall on 9 March 1589. On 6 September that year, Maximilian was brought to Będzin and then escorted by Bishop Wawrzyniec Goślicki, Mikołaj Zebrzydowski, and Polish hussars to the border bridge over the Brynica near Czeladź.
Fire damaged the castle and part of the town in 1616. Andrzej Dębiński, the Będzin starost and deputy cupbearer of Krakow, rebuilt the fortress at his own expense. Swedish forces burned it again and partly demolished it during the invasion of 1655–1656. The troops were commanded by Hartfeld, Montecuccoli, and Sporek. Royal inspectors ordered reconstruction in 1660, and the work was completed in 1665.
Tradition holds that King John III Sobieski, his wife Marysieńka, and an imperial embassy led by General Count Anton Caraffa stayed at the castle on 19 or 20 August 1683, while Sobieski travelled to relieve Vienna. The castle also received King Augustus II the Strong later in the seventeenth century.
Administration and decline
Until the end of the sixteenth century, royal burgraves managed the castle itself. From the early seventeenth century, it became part of a non-castellan starosty, a landed royal holding rather than the seat of a major territorial castellany, and served as the residence of its lifelong private holders. Among the known holders from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries were Piotr Szafraniec, Stefan of Pogórzyce, Prosper Prowana, Andrzej Samuel Dembiński, Krzysztof Gosławski, and Jan Dębowski.
After the Sejm abolished the starosties in 1775, Stanisław Mieroszewski obtained the Będzin estates on a fifty-year lease. The Mieroszewskis did not live at the castle, and its ruined condition was recorded in 1789. Following the second partition of Poland, Prussian authorities gave the castle and its estates to a Hohenzollern. A contract of 19 July 1802 placed the property in perpetual lease to 96 Będzin townspeople. Jan Gęborski is also identified as its owner. He owned the five-morgen Castle Hill, planted trees there at his own expense, and began the park that survives around the ruins.
Tree planting exposed graves, and several cartloads of human bones were moved to a nearby cemetery. A subterranean passage leading from the castle towards St Thomas’s Church was also found. Father Podczaski, the vicar, had its entrance walled up and filled with rubble to keep treasure hunters from entering.
Nineteenth-century rebuilding
In 1825, a resident was killed when part of the castle wall collapsed. The Olkusz district commissioner, Lauzański, then ordered the castle to be demolished to its foundations. A decree issued from Warsaw on 5 March 1827 required historic monuments in the district to be registered and protected, halting the planned demolition.
Count Edward Raczyński, a Polish Bank commissioner and collector of national antiquities, visited Będzin in 1833 and decided to restore the picturesque ruins. Francesco Maria Lanci designed the rebuilding carried out in 1834. The restored castle was intended to house a mining school, but that plan was abandoned. The Mining Board instead converted it into a prayer hall for miners brought from Saxony to Dąbrowa in 1838.
An evangelical chapel was established in 1840, and the first Protestant service in the Dąbrowa Basin was held there. The chapel operated until about 1843. After minor alterations, the castle was used as a hospital, but it proved unsuitable and had fallen into ruin again by 1849.
Twentieth-century conservation and museum use
In 1919, Stefan Warchoł, Jan Gęborski, Benedykt Misiórski, and Roman Wyszatycki founded the Society for the Care of Castle Hill. Its statutes received final approval on 18 November 1927. Gęborski transferred the park and castle ruins to the society in the hope of reconstruction, and work began in 1929 under a design by Professor Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz.
The 1929 building works produced numerous historic objects, including spurs, swords, misericords, axes, a stone axe, Gothic keys, majolica, and coins of Wenceslaus II. Marian Kantor-Mirski also found a stone bearing a drawing of a breastplate and the date 1588. It was probably a memorial to the Bytom–Będzin treaty and was placed in Gęborski’s garden.
Major reconstruction took place from 1952 to 1956 under engineer Zygmunt Gawlik, giving the castle its present appearance. The Museum of the Zagłębie Basin was established there in July 1956 as the first museum institution in the Zagłębie Basin. Its directorate remained in the castle until 1982. The castle has protected cultural heritage status in Poland, with registrations dated 15 October 1951 and 23 February 1960.
Remains
Setting and defensive layout
Będzin Castle stands on the left bank of the Czarna Przemsza, about 4.5 kilometres from the historic border with Silesia. It occupies Castle Hill above the river and was founded over the remains of an earlier medieval stronghold. The surviving complex consists of the upper castle and the fragmentary remains of a lower castle to its west.
Upper castle
The upper castle was enclosed by two concentric curtain walls, or continuous defensive walls, divided by gates. A road ran between the walls towards the courtyard. The medieval complex also included a further walled section with a gate, but that part was not reconstructed. The fortress formed three layers of walls and was connected with Będzin’s town walls, sections of which survive.
Lower castle
The lower castle lay west of the upper enclosure. Only fragments of its foundations survive. It had an additional defensive wall, a quadrangular tower, and a gate opening to the north.
Towers and castle buildings
Cylindrical tower
The earliest stone element is the cylindrical tower in the north-eastern part of the hill. Built from local stone during the second half of the thirteenth century, it measures 10.7 metres in diameter and retains four storeys. Its entrance was on the third storey. The tower was originally much higher and probably ended in a brick crown, while the present structure is markedly lower as a result of the nineteenth-century rebuilding. It opened to visitors in 1969.
Square tower and residential building
A later phase added a roughly square, five-storey tower measuring 9 by 8.5 metres. A four-storey residential building was subsequently attached to it and probably provided the entrance to the castle. An alternative reconstruction based on Matthias Gerung’s view of Będzin proposes that the square tower was not originally a separately visible structure. On this interpretation, it and the residential building formed one castle block under a single roof, with both sections sharing the same number of storeys. The courtyard was then about two metres lower than it is today.
Construction and later appearance
The castle walls use opus emplectum, a wall-building method in which dressed stone faces enclose a rubble-and-mortar core. Roughly broken dolomite was the principal material, with brick used occasionally. The medieval Gothic fabric was substantially altered during the nineteenth-century reconstruction.
Lanci’s 1834 design introduced a Romantic neo-Gothic appearance. It added blind loopholes, which resemble openings for weapons but are decorative, blind machicolations, which imitate projecting features once used to drop missiles onto attackers, and large windows with brick surrounds. The walls were altered, the square tower was made thinner to create larger interior surfaces, and the cylindrical tower was significantly lowered. The current appearance therefore results chiefly from Lanci’s rebuilding and Gawlik’s reconstruction of 1952–1956.
Museum collections and interior use
The Museum of the Zagłębie Basin occupies the castle. Its collections include arms and armour dating from the Middle Ages through the Second World War, material on the history of Będzin Castle, displays about other nearby castles founded by Casimir III the Great, and objects relating to the military history of the Będzin region. A café was installed in the castle cellars in 1974.
